How to Write Kick-ass Tweets that Stand out

Recently it struck me: With every blog post we are writing, we try to create a great and original piece of content.

What about Tweets though?

I realized most of my tweets are not original at all: they are either post titles with links or quotes.

Some are questions or general statements, yet I wouldn’t count that as providing content.

Something is not right I thought.

As Twitter is growing insanely fast, bringing in more opportunities for providing great content, I decided I HAVE to change that.

Create amazing Tweets that are yours

Of course, I understand, we can’t dedicate hours and hours towards writing tweets, yet recently I started using a tool that turns this task into an effortless experience.

Buffer allows you to make every tweet a unique one that is truly yours.

How does Buffer work?

With Buffer, all you do is throw tweets into your Buffer and the App then schedules these tweets for you well spaced out over the day.

How can I make my Tweets stand out then?

Buffer comes with a nifty feature that makes it truly “Killer” for me and useful every day. It is a browser extension for Safari, Chrome or Firefox that allows you to add tweets into your Buffer from any page.

On top of that you can go ahead and highlight a certain line in an article and then hit the Buffer icon. Automatically Buffer will turn this into your tweet, here is an awesome quote form Ana I used:

Buffered Tweets – When are they sent?

The thing I like about throwing tweets in your Buffer is that you can put a lot of them in at one point, yet you won’t flood your followers with too much info. Teaming it up with Ana’s advice on sending a group of 3-4 tweets you can easily set these time blocks as fixed times and then forget about them.

By default Buffer sends your tweets well spaced out during the day and you can always go back to your home account at www.bufferapp.com and change your timing, add more or adjust them to your needs. Here are my fixed daily tweeting times:

Does that really change anything?

In order for you to know whether your Buffered tweets actually make an impact, you receive detailed analytics for them.

This means Clicks, Retweets and Reach of your Tweets. Here is a set of data from my past tweets:

Add from inside Google Reader

What I particularly like about Buffer is that it does one thing, yet it does this one thing very well. You can add tweets to your Buffer even from inside Google Reader.

Also, by default if you just hit the Buffer icon whilst reading an article you conveniently get the title of the page and the shortened link, here is another example of Ana’s post:

Are your tweets standing out?

Making use of Buffer has helped me a great deal to really leave my own fingerprint on all of my tweets by picking out the lines I liked the most and then tweeting those.

How about you? Do you have any techniques to make your tweets stand out?

Hi! I realize this is sort of off-topic but I needed to ask. Does operating a well-established blog such as yours require a massive amount work? I am completely new to blogging however I do write in my diary every day. I’d like to start a blog so I can share my experience and thoughts online. Please let me know if you have any kind of ideas or tips for brand new aspiring blog owners. Thankyou!

I’m actually writing about Buffer for a friend’s website, because I keep telling so many of them about it already!

I love this app, it’s such a useful Twitter tool and I use it constantly. A couple of notes, though:

You didn’t say anything about being able add more than one Twitter account! You can add up to three if you use a Pro account!

Also – integrate your Bit.ly information into the settings feature and track your URLs that way as well!

And lastly – my newest Twitter tool and it is already integrated with Buffer–Strawberry Jam. If you like to recommend a lot of articles (not all your own!) about a given subject, you can use this site to not only find the content to read for yourself, but build up your buffer with great recommendations as well!

this is great news about buffer. i’ve been using hootsuite & MMS but the scheduling with Hoot is time consuming…and MMS can only schedule posts to FB profile..limiting..as i was doing my follow up research here to get more info on Buffer, guess who i find here already? my good friend Katrina! from Kat’s Cafe. Hi!..i was about to send her this article but she has already replied! You are always a more than a step ahead. good work Katrina! always in the loop!

Thank you Leo for the article. great content!
i am looking forward to giving Buffer a try.
Thanks Ana for inviting Leo!

You have indeed come out with a wonderful post regarding tweets. Tweets have become an important tool now a days in the traffic generation process and the concept of buffer that you have brought into play is really nice.Its definitely worth a shot!

Well I have decided to get along with the buffer idea, but its on hault right now since I would like it to be synchronized with my blog posts, so its going to take a while. But once, implemented, be sure I am gonna share the story.

Hi Leo,
Writing original and interesting tweets is close to impossible these days.
Buffer helps a lot, but not on the creative part. It saves time in some areas, but not in all.
But sure, we don’t want to write a book here, how hard can it be to get two rows of interesting text? Harder than it seems, because everybody’s trying to do the same thing and the competition’s a killer.

Yes, I totally understand what you are saying here. You are competing against so many other tweets out there it is really difficult. I believe creating a genuine appearance helps a great deal, so doing it in the long run will prove more effective then working quickly on a few headlines.

Hmm, you know, I really don’t agree with this method. I think it defeats the entire purpose of Twitter, which is real time interaction/connection. I unfollow people pretty much immediately when I detect anything “inorganic” about their tweeting habits. It’s just a waste of my time.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Yes, I think you are absolutely right, in case we turn ourselves into auto-bots tweeting things all the time whilst we are not there it can be a real showstopper just like you say. Unfollowing is definitely something to be considered.

I feel with Buffer you can strike up a healthy balance between the two things as there is a “tweet now” and an “add to Buffer” function.

Sometimes I felt that I am reading a lot of great posts in a row in a short space of time. Instead of posting them all at once and overwhelming my followers with too many tweets I add them into Buffer, which will space them out a little, and delay them for a few hours.

What do you think about that? Would love to hear your thoughts on this Jonathan 🙂

I have not used Buffer to this extent. i think it was a matter of getting in and finding out what it is all about. Thanks for this great overview. Now I can already see how to use it more effectively. I really like the fact that your can capture a quote from the post you want to tweet and the tracking capabilities.

Yet another example of the old saying that you learn something new every day. I didn’t know about Buffer, but I certainly want to look into it. No one has the time to manually tweet at the optimum times throughout the day, so this feature would come in handy.

Yes, Buffer would be a great tool to increase the potential of our tweets. Buffer will certainly allow us to post in the best times (twitter peaks) which is equal to more exposure. I haven’t really tried Buffer (although I have read about it in many blogs). I will surely try it (I tend to be a procrastinator when it comes to trying out new tools).

Thanks for your comment! Yep, absolutely, it is just like you say, it will help a great deal to post at Twitter peak times and get more exposure, especially as your tweets are also tracked and you get analytics for it.

Hope you will give it a go, would love to hear your views on it once used.

Another great article. I have been thinking about a way to increase the impact of my tweets, getting retweeted and such. I am going to check out this app. Traffic Generation always gives such good advice, it is just so hard to keep up and implement all the good advice, but I do my best. Please don’t stop providing all the wonderful advice you give.

I have just started to use Buffer, and it seems to be a decent application. Nothing too fancy, as it is mainly used for scheduling tweets. I haven’t fully explored what it can probably do, but it is handy if you need to schedule a tweet.

Yes, you are absolutely right, it is mainly used for Tweet scheduling. Yep, there are a few more handy add-ons you can use with Buffer, I hope you get a chance to explore them, would love to hear your views on them! 🙂